It was summer in Antarctica when sophomore Peter Goransson
climbed Vinson Massif, one of the youngest people to ever scale
the imposing peak. The eight-day January journey took him from
the relative warmth of his home state, Maine, to one of the
world’s harshest environments, where wind chills may
have dipped below minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit at times. At
16,067 feet, Vinson Massif is Antarctica’s tallest mountain
and one of seven peaks recognized as the highest points on
their continents. Goransson, with his family, has already scaled
two others—Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and Mt. Kosciusko
in Australia (still to go: Mt. Elbrus in Russia, Mt. Aconcagua
in Argentina, Mt. McKinley in Alaska, and Mt. Everest in Nepal).
After his trek, Goransson, 20, found out he wasn’t the
youngest person ever to ascend Vinson Massif—a 14-year-old
boy had just done that. But Goransson was in good company,
traveling with a mountain climbing outfit. His fellow hikers
also included his father and his father’s friend Ray
Greenlaw, both of whom are comfortable going to extremes, such
as taking on back-to-back marathons and other challenges. (Greenlaw
holds the world record for completing the Pacific Coast Trail
in 83 days, a feat he chronicled in his book The Fastest Hike).
Some of that spirit is rubbing off on Goransson, who most of
the year logs 50 to 80 miles a week for the Tufts track and
cross-country teams, training for triathlons, and pursuing
a no less challenging major in computer engineering.

“The hardest part is getting there. We flew from Boston
to Miami to Santiago, Chile, to Punta Arenas, Chile, on the Straits
of Magellan, the southernmost point of South America. From there,
a special plane took us into Patriot Hills, Antarctica. They
land you on this two-mile-long blue ice runway. The only way
the plane can stop is with reverse thrusters. Landing there was
just amazing, because you figure that this plane could crash
so easily. Basically, you’re landing
on an ice skating rink. From Patriot Hills, I had to get on another
plane for an hour’s flight to Vinson base camp. That plane
was a lot smaller and it took off on skis.

“Antarctica is absolutely barren nothingness as far as
the eye can see. It’s also a beautiful place. But this
is a whole continent, three times the size of the United States,
where you see absolutely nothing along the horizon unless you
are right on the coast. Mountains, the sun, and of course our
GPS helped us with orientation. The temperature probably averaged
about 0–5 Fahrenheit, but since the sun
never goes down in the summer there, it was very powerful. Some
days we’d be comfortable walking around with a shirt and
baseball cap because the sun was so strong. Early on I got really
badly sunburned on my nose and had to create a protective nose-piece
out of duct tape to shield it from the sun’s rays.

“Vinson Massif has an awesome presence. Imagine the White
Mountains three times taller, covered by a mile-deep sheet of
ice and snow, so only their tops are sticking out, and glaciers
are running down the sides. Up until summit day, it was crystal
clear. The physical act of climbing was very exhausting at times.
There were hourly breaks where we’d get 15 minutes to eat
and drink quickly; it was like this all the way up. Usually I
was able to put the exhaustion out of my mind, as I normally
do during long triathlons, for example. But after seven-plus
hours of climbing on the average day, it was hard to continue
putting the fatigue out of my mind. Realizing how hard it had
been leading up to that point and reading Ray’s The Fastest
Hike along the way were great sources of inspiration to keep
me going.

“You can’t get to Vinson unless you’re serious.
When you’re doing it, you can’t concentrate on anything
but doing what you’re doing. There’s no time to enjoy
something when you have to think about the next job. It’s
not over until it’s over.
“The weather was bad at the end of the trip, so they couldn’t
fly the plane in from Punta Arenas to Patriot Hills. We were
stuck. For six straight days I was moving from one tent to another
all day long, waiting, hoping that the weather would clear.

“My agenda each day was to wake up at two o’clock
in the afternoon, go to breakfast, and then read, play cards.
At one point, I was so bored that I took a piece of cardboard
and a Magic Marker and drew out a chessboard. I made little cardboard
chess pieces and played with my dad. I brought the set home and
put it under glass for my dad to put in his office. It has our
picture in the middle. He likes that a lot.

“I competed in my first triathlon when I was 14. Since
then, I’ve fallen in love with endurance races and done
a few of them every summer. I did my first half–Iron Man
triathlon last summer. I enjoy feeling that I can compete with
people physically. If you can just finish a triathlon, then you
should get a lot of respect, because that’s a hard thing
to do. Then you can say, ‘Well, now triathlons feel easy
to me. I want to go to the next level. I want to do an ultra-marathon.’ This
happened to my dad. At one time my dad would never have done
an ultra- marathon, but now it seems he goes out and does 40-mile
races with only a couple days’ notice. The bar has to be
raised or else it feels like there’s a lull. Once you reach
a goal, how can you set that as a goal again? That’s the
mentality that most cross-country and track runners have. Because
if you think about it, if you get a PR (personal record) in track
and you lower your mile time by five seconds, the next time you
run a mile, you’re not going to say, ‘Oh, I hope
I get that same time again.’ You’re always going
to want to do faster and faster and faster, because it’s
essentially setting a goal for yourself and accomplishing it.
There’s no better feeling in the world than achieving what
you set up, especially if it’s really high. So you want
to have a goal that’s doable, but still really hard. I
think endurance athletes have different attitudes than other
competitors because they’re competing mainly with themselves.”